Welcome to the"A place to play pinball the way pinball was meant to be played!"In Fabulous Las Vegas, NevadaThis Is The PINBALL HALL of FAME Official Web Site!Visit The Pinball Hall of Fame at its NEW Location:1610 E. Tropicana Ave.Twice the Space for Games / Half the Distance to the Strip!

The
Pinball Hall of Fame is the realized dream of Michigan native Tim
Arnold. For many years, Tim's Pinball Pete's arcades were leisure time
musts for students attending the University of Michigan and
Michigan State University and for the residents of Ann Arbor and East
Lansing as well. By the early 1990s Tim's focus had changed. He
sold his interest in the arcades to his brothers and moved, with his
wife Charlotte, to Las Vegas to pursue a new
dream. His collection of nearly 1000 pinball machines moved with
them!

Tim (center) shows some visiting collectors his "tennis court games."

Plastic sheeting is ready to protect against the rare Nevada shower.

Games are in Tim's 10,000 sq. ft. "shed" ready to be set up to host fun nights.

I
remember visiting them shortly after the move. The memory of
hundreds of pinball machines, on end, packed onto Tim’s tennis court is
still vivid. The court, to this day, has not felt a tennis ball, but it
did make a perfect place to store the games!

Eventually
they were all moved into a 10,000 square foot building next to
the court and for the next dozen or so years the cream of this
collection (along with some vintage arcade games) was made available to
the public on a few magic evenings a year—Fun Nights.

The
goal of these Fun Nights was to spread the joy of pinball but also to
raise money through raffles for local charities and to grow the LVPCC
building fund so some day the public Pinball Hall of Fame could be born.

You were invited ...

... you played the games ...

... met the Colonal and friendly staff ...

...
and gathered for a raffle featuring cool pinball related prizes
including the use of any pinball game in the collection for one year!

While
contributions to the raffle was optional, most people bought at
least a few dollars worth of tickets, many 20, 50, often 100 or more.
The random, but very welcome, $5,000+ check would appear from time to
time. People would also donate items for the raffle. Magazine
subscriptions, posters, T-shirts, pinball parts, books: anything a
pinball enthusiast might like. But while we all bought raffle tickets
and did what we could, the driving force was and is Tim. These
Fun Nights were planned, organized and funded by Tim and Charlotte. The
games were Tim's. They provided the snacks, the electricity
and facilities for the scores of people who showed up.
And remember, this was their HOME. It all took place
in their back yard! They even opened their guest bedrooms for out
of town crew members and the odd pinball magazine publisher who usually
attended from back home in Michigan. It took determination, focus and a
LOT of understanding, especially on Charlotte’s part, to pull the
events off for those many years! But they could not do it alone.
There was a small but fiercely loyal band of volunteers, some local and
some who traveled, who spent days in preparation before each event.
Volunteers like Hippy, Hopper, Smiley Robert, Ugly Mike, Old
Harold and others were all there to help.

Part of the crew for the last Fun Night in the "Big Hit Shed."

Rows and rows of games now located in the PHOF!

Tim (right) with PHOF right hand man, Mike "Hippy" Clark.

Tim
would buy pinball games, spend days in restoration and then deposit the
entire proceeds of a sale into the LVPCC building fund account. He
placed his own games as well as other money-makers on location around
the community and the profit went into the fund. He would travel to
pinball shows around the country conducting raffles and selling
pinball-related items including videos that were self produced or made
and donated by others, all in support of the Hall.

His dream
became a reality when the Pinball Hall of Fame was opened in a store
front of a strip shopping center. Things went well but there was still
one more step to take and that was the move from the rented restrictive
confines of the center to a free standing, much larger
building owned by the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club.

Now that
dream has become a reality, and you can share in the
fun. Come see what the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club has
created! It’s just down the from the “Strip,” on the famous
Tropicana Avenue, across the street from the Liberace Museum, and
of course you don’t have to just look … you can PLAY!